5 ms·

Mac People: Safari or Firefox 3?

11 points by noelchurchill 18y ago

I've stuck with Safari till now for performance as well as aesthetics. I like the new firefox look on mac, and the performance is better as well. Anyone switching over? Why or why not?

markbao 18y ago
I'm still sticking with Safari. Firefox's faster, but there's nothing that beats the speed of Safari on Mac, and in addition it is Cocoa (while Firefox is Carbon.) For some reason, this makes Safari feel like a more solid browser, and Firefox feeling like a typical Carbon app (whatever that is - just a weird user experience using it.) If the dealbreaker is extensions, then I have to say that the only extensions I use in Firefox are Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug, which are excellent extensions. I only start Firefox to a) test sites on Firefox and b) use the aforementioned extensions. Safari has a good built-in alternative to Firebug, which is available by going to Safari > Preferences > Advanced and checking Show Develop menu in menu bar. Then go to Develop > Web Inspector (or the other tools there.) Good for quick Javascript troubleshooting, as it also has a Javascript error/eval console. In Firefox, I've found that other extensions usually make the browser more bloated and slower to use. They're nice, and sure, you could have ForecastFox tell you the weather, but it's not worth the bloat, in my opinion. And themes... :| If you're like me, you'll miss a lot of extensions, but realize in the end that you don't really need most of them. del.icio.us was a favorite extension of mine. On Safari, I put the del.icio.us bookmarklet as the first bookmark on my menu bar. Then I hide the menu bar (apple+shift+b.) When I want to bookmark something to del.icio.us, I hit Apple+1, tag, save. Firefox is a great browser, and Firefox 3 makes it even better, but Safari is a fast, no-frills, and great web browser. Although Safari has less 3rd party addons (and most of them superb, like Inquisitor) it's a web browser that does what you should expect it to do, and fast - browse the web.
- reidab 18y ago
  http://delicioussafari.com/ http://delicioussafari.com/ It's shareware, but it only nags when accessing bookmarks, not when saving them (which is all I ever used the FF extension for anyway...)
- sc 18y ago
  > it also has a Javascript error/eval console. It even has tab-completion, which makes it feel even more solid than what I've experienced with FF and various extensions. I only open FF for FF-specific testing.
tortilla 18y ago
When I switched from Windows, I went straight to Firefox because I felt comfortable there. But (3 years ago), Firefox started getting buggy and slow. I loved the add-ons, but I switched to Camino because it was more Mac-like and stable. But since Beta 3 for Firefox came out, I've switched back and been really impressed with it. One feature that Firefox and Camino both have is the "Search for text when I start typing" which I use a lot for mouseless navigation. I don't have any major gripes against Safari, I just prefer Firefox. The GrApple Delicious theme for firefox is a must have for any Mac user.
- noelchurchill 18y ago
  Safari has the search for text while typing now too. It's cool.
  - tortilla 18y ago
    But can you navigate with it?
  - comatose_kid 18y ago
    Really? How would I enable this? I don't see anything in prefs for Safari 3.1.1.
    - noelchurchill 18y ago
      Command + F then start typing what you're looking for on the page. Command + G will proceed to the next instance of your search phrase on the page.
      - tortilla 18y ago
        Unless I'm mistaken, Safari can't do this: There's the "logout" link on this page, I just start typing l-o-g..., and once it gets highlighted, I can hit return and it'll click the link for me. Or if I need to go to the next word, I can still hit command+G. I don't have to invoke Find either, I can just start typing.
dougfort 18y ago
Camino
- whalesalad 18y ago
  Camino has to be one of the worst browsers I have ever used. I don't know what they are up to. In my mind, Camino should simply be Firefox with Webkit replacing the gecko engine... but it's not even on par with Firefox. One thing I hate about Mac in general is their hate for navigating solely with the keyboard. A lot of third-party apps do a good job letting you navigate using your kb only (such as cmd+1, cmd+2... to hit tabs in FF) but the last time I used Camino they were seriously lacking in that department. Clicking links with the mousewheel is also very important to me (to open in a new tab).
  - jacobolus 18y ago
    Why is it one of the worst? Why should it “be Firefox with Webkit”? Who are these mysterious “they”? In Camino, I use the keyboard to navigate, and my third mouse button opens links in new tabs, with no problems.
knowncitizen 18y ago
I am just totally enamored by Webkit. It's insanely fast. I usually run nightlies and haven't hit a nasty bug yet.
- cocoy 18y ago
  yep. me too. i got FF3 too but i'm sticking with WebKit as my number 1 browser!
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
fourlittlebees 18y ago
FF 3. Just hope they get the bug fixed QUICK. Safari is a huge resource suck and horks on a lot of sites I use.
- noelchurchill 18y ago
  Safari is a resource suck? I always thought it was more efficient than FF.
  - fourlittlebees 18y ago
    It's fine on its own, but any time a site is using Flash or, heaven forbid, an applet, it would jump right to the head of the line, even with 70 or 80 tabs open in FF2.
    - dcurtis 18y ago
      Why would you have 70-80 tabs open in anything? When I have a lot of tabs open, I feel dirty and cluttered.
      - fourlittlebees 18y ago
        That's the life of a technology writer. I'm usually working several different stories at the same time. It's a mess, but it works better for me than trying to retrieve bookmarks. I keep meaning to check out one of the new research tools to manage it, but never seem to make the time.
noelchurchill 18y ago
I settled on Safari a while ago. I'll probably stick with Safari as my default, but make more use of firefox and it's plugins.
bayareaguy 18y ago
Compartmentalizing helps prevent the possibility of total catastrophe, so for me it's Firefox for work, Safari for personal business, Opera for browsing, Camino for everything else.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
butterfi 18y ago
I've like Safari's text-rendering better then FF in the past, but FF3 is looking great, and I'm intrigued by the ability to tag bookmarks.
colinplamondon 18y ago
Firefox 3- it's more stable, Del.icio.us integration is better on it, the awesome bar is awesome, and Greasemonkey works with it. A lot of Greasemonkey plugins are pretty useless, but GoogleAutoPager is fantastic. It makes it so that Google searches are on an infinite page, as you scroll down the plugin gets the next page of results and slots them in so you never have to click next page http://lifehacker.com/software/google/download-of-the-day-google-autopager-greasemonkey-252490.php http://lifehacker.com/software/google/download-of-the-day-go... Also, FF3 has Firebug. Game, set, and match.
sasvari 18y ago
Firefox + Foxmarks ^ no chance for Safari
bprater 18y ago
I've switched back-and-forth a bit, but have settled in with Firefox. Not having the extensions I like is a killer.
ajbatac 18y ago
If you are just browsing, reading stuff, Safari rules. However, if you are developing a website, use Firefox.
- sc 18y ago
  I don't know. These days, Safari's Web Inspector is quite on-par with Firebug, with some things I like even better.
mojuba 18y ago
For security reasons you need more than one browser anyway. One for webmail, banking and all kinds of private password-protected stuff, and the second one - for the rest. Which is which doesn't really matter, although personally I chose Safari for important stuff and Firefox for the rest. One of the reasons I do this, in case you are not aware, is the IFRAME flaw, that allows a malicious web site to load, say, your bank's page into a hidden IFRAME, check to see if you are logged in and then - you guessed it. (I just thought actually, could be the other way around, because vulnerabilities in Firefox are better known and more often exploited by not-so-trustworthy sites. So maybe it'd be smarter to use Safari for "the rest" and Firefox - for your banking, PayPal, eBay, webemail, etc.)
- anewaccountname 18y ago
  Why not just use different profiles and run multiple instances of Firefox?
  - mojuba 18y ago
    If I can run them simultaneously, then why not. Is it possible with FF?
silencio 18y ago
I'm still sticking with Safari. Safari UX is just..nicer. To me, that is. On the other hand, Firefox is definitely powerful and I love some of the addons, so I'll use it for development purposes - a lot of Firebug etc., have become moot with Safari's new and hot developer tools, but I still need to do some Firefox-specific things. But I don't want to spend so much time customizing how it looks/behaves.
zzzmarcus 18y ago
The main reason I stick with FF is for Firebug and the Del.icio.us plugins.
- jimm 18y ago
  Those two and AdBlock---though I just discovered an ad blocker on pimpmysafari.com. (For the record: I use Firefox.)
  - evgen 18y ago
    Check out safariadblock (safariadblock.sourceforge.net) for an adblocker that is basically a port of adblockplus.
- ionfish 18y ago
  I find that having the 'Add to del.icio.us' bookmarklet in my bookmarks bar and then just hitting Cmd+1 whenever I want to bookmark something works pretty well. I tend to hide the bookmarks bar because the way I use it, it just takes up unnecessary screen space, but the procedure above doesn't require it.
hokey 18y ago
FF3, here's why: 1) Add-ons. I can customize more than Safari and plugging into the cloud today is more important than ever. 2) Safari is snappy but the new release of FF puts it on par if not over the top. Safari is way better for pr0n surfing, however :P
DougBTX 18y ago
Still running Safari, no reason or need to switch.
feverishaaron 18y ago
Safari to surf, Firefox to develop because of Firebug. So far though, I am very unimpressed with the interface choices they made with Firefox.
- boucher 18y ago
  Webkit nightlies have an enhanced Web Inspector that's nearly as good as Firebug.
  - ps 18y ago
    For me, it is far behind Firebug. I really miss keyboard shortcuts (at least for inspecting XHRs, please) and layout HTML/CSS inspection (not just highlighting elements while browsing tree).
    - ionfish 18y ago
      It's certainly not there yet, but the Web Inspector in recent nightlies is a lot closer to Firebug than the one in Safari 3.1. That, and the advances the WebKit team are making elsewhere, gives me a lot of confidence that it's only a matter of time before Safari has a built-in web development tool and JavaScript debugger that matches or improves on Firebug in every area.
crux 18y ago
vimperator means that as much as i love webkit, i'll never leave firefox's insane quasi-native interface.
makecheck 18y ago
Neither, really...OmniWeb is better. Technically it is now using the Safari engine, but the browser itself is superior to Safari. It has very nice per-site preferences, really smart privacy options, plug-in management, etc.
ynd 18y ago
FF3. Apple developers succeeded in make Safari FEEL more solid but it crashes too often. I also wish Safari was as configurable as FF.
tokyotribe28 18y ago
I use both. Safari's still got a better look and feel, I think, so that's my default.
wigglywonk 18y ago
Firefox is a -beast- on the mac. It drags and constantly seems to be using 5% of CPU, doesn't do fonts right, and hangs and lags a lot. So, i use Safari about 80% of the time. However, it's got a lot of great plugins, so I use it for any questionable stuff and for proxied traffic, etc.
Maro 18y ago
Safari seems buggy to me. For example, go to Google Docs, open a document and tell me what key combination jumps to the beginning/end of the line. (The answer seems to be none.) Same for Firefox. Opera is the only browser where this simple "feature" works. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
geuis 18y ago
Firefox. Definitely Firefox. The UI on Safari isn't really that good.
pierrefar 18y ago
If you like your keyboard shortcuts that (mostly) work across all FF installations across all platforms, go with FF. If you're a Mac-only person, stick with Safari if you already know it well. Also, FF has extensions which although there are good alternatives on Safari, I sincerely doubt there are as many good quality ones for Safari as for FF.
cstef 18y ago
I use Safari for general browsing because it is fast and familiar. I use Firefox for web development because the add-ons and tools such as firebug and web developer toolbar can not be beat.
syalam 18y ago
used to do safari. now im on firefox because of speed, and better extensions. lets see if safari 4 can turn the tables

11 points by noelchurchill 18y ago

I've stuck with Safari till now for performance as well as aesthetics. I like the new firefox look on mac, and the performance is better as well. Anyone switching over? Why or why not?

markbao 18y ago

I'm still sticking with Safari. Firefox's faster, but there's nothing that beats the speed of Safari on Mac, and in addition it is Cocoa (while Firefox is Carbon.) For some reason, this makes Safari feel like a more solid browser, and Firefox feeling like a typical Carbon app (whatever that is - just a weird user experience using it.) If the dealbreaker is extensions, then I have to say that the only extensions I use in Firefox are Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug, which are excellent extensions. I only start Firefox to a) test sites on Firefox and b) use the aforementioned extensions. Safari has a good built-in alternative to Firebug, which is available by going to Safari > Preferences > Advanced and checking Show Develop menu in menu bar. Then go to Develop > Web Inspector (or the other tools there.) Good for quick Javascript troubleshooting, as it also has a Javascript error/eval console. In Firefox, I've found that other extensions usually make the browser more bloated and slower to use. They're nice, and sure, you could have ForecastFox tell you the weather, but it's not worth the bloat, in my opinion. And themes... :| If you're like me, you'll miss a lot of extensions, but realize in the end that you don't really need most of them. del.icio.us was a favorite extension of mine. On Safari, I put the del.icio.us bookmarklet as the first bookmark on my menu bar. Then I hide the menu bar (apple+shift+b.) When I want to bookmark something to del.icio.us, I hit Apple+1, tag, save. Firefox is a great browser, and Firefox 3 makes it even better, but Safari is a fast, no-frills, and great web browser. Although Safari has less 3rd party addons (and most of them superb, like Inquisitor) it's a web browser that does what you should expect it to do, and fast - browse the web.

reidab 18y ago
http://delicioussafari.com/ http://delicioussafari.com/ It's shareware, but it only nags when accessing bookmarks, not when saving them (which is all I ever used the FF extension for anyway...)
sc 18y ago
> it also has a Javascript error/eval console. It even has tab-completion, which makes it feel even more solid than what I've experienced with FF and various extensions. I only open FF for FF-specific testing.

tortilla 18y ago

When I switched from Windows, I went straight to Firefox because I felt comfortable there. But (3 years ago), Firefox started getting buggy and slow. I loved the add-ons, but I switched to Camino because it was more Mac-like and stable. But since Beta 3 for Firefox came out, I've switched back and been really impressed with it. One feature that Firefox and Camino both have is the "Search for text when I start typing" which I use a lot for mouseless navigation. I don't have any major gripes against Safari, I just prefer Firefox. The GrApple Delicious theme for firefox is a must have for any Mac user.

noelchurchill 18y ago
Safari has the search for text while typing now too. It's cool.
- tortilla 18y ago
  But can you navigate with it?
- comatose_kid 18y ago
  Really? How would I enable this? I don't see anything in prefs for Safari 3.1.1.
  - noelchurchill 18y ago
    Command + F then start typing what you're looking for on the page. Command + G will proceed to the next instance of your search phrase on the page.
    - tortilla 18y ago
      Unless I'm mistaken, Safari can't do this: There's the "logout" link on this page, I just start typing l-o-g..., and once it gets highlighted, I can hit return and it'll click the link for me. Or if I need to go to the next word, I can still hit command+G. I don't have to invoke Find either, I can just start typing.

dougfort 18y ago

Camino

whalesalad 18y ago
Camino has to be one of the worst browsers I have ever used. I don't know what they are up to. In my mind, Camino should simply be Firefox with Webkit replacing the gecko engine... but it's not even on par with Firefox. One thing I hate about Mac in general is their hate for navigating solely with the keyboard. A lot of third-party apps do a good job letting you navigate using your kb only (such as cmd+1, cmd+2... to hit tabs in FF) but the last time I used Camino they were seriously lacking in that department. Clicking links with the mousewheel is also very important to me (to open in a new tab).
- jacobolus 18y ago
  Why is it one of the worst? Why should it “be Firefox with Webkit”? Who are these mysterious “they”? In Camino, I use the keyboard to navigate, and my third mouse button opens links in new tabs, with no problems.

knowncitizen 18y ago

I am just totally enamored by Webkit. It's insanely fast. I usually run nightlies and haven't hit a nasty bug yet.

cocoy 18y ago
yep. me too. i got FF3 too but i'm sticking with WebKit as my number 1 browser!

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

fourlittlebees 18y ago

FF 3. Just hope they get the bug fixed QUICK. Safari is a huge resource suck and horks on a lot of sites I use.

noelchurchill 18y ago
Safari is a resource suck? I always thought it was more efficient than FF.
- fourlittlebees 18y ago
  It's fine on its own, but any time a site is using Flash or, heaven forbid, an applet, it would jump right to the head of the line, even with 70 or 80 tabs open in FF2.
  - dcurtis 18y ago
    Why would you have 70-80 tabs open in anything? When I have a lot of tabs open, I feel dirty and cluttered.
    - fourlittlebees 18y ago
      That's the life of a technology writer. I'm usually working several different stories at the same time. It's a mess, but it works better for me than trying to retrieve bookmarks. I keep meaning to check out one of the new research tools to manage it, but never seem to make the time.

noelchurchill 18y ago

I settled on Safari a while ago. I'll probably stick with Safari as my default, but make more use of firefox and it's plugins.

bayareaguy 18y ago

Compartmentalizing helps prevent the possibility of total catastrophe, so for me it's Firefox for work, Safari for personal business, Opera for browsing, Camino for everything else.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

butterfi 18y ago

I've like Safari's text-rendering better then FF in the past, but FF3 is looking great, and I'm intrigued by the ability to tag bookmarks.

colinplamondon 18y ago

Firefox 3- it's more stable, Del.icio.us integration is better on it, the awesome bar is awesome, and Greasemonkey works with it. A lot of Greasemonkey plugins are pretty useless, but GoogleAutoPager is fantastic. It makes it so that Google searches are on an infinite page, as you scroll down the plugin gets the next page of results and slots them in so you never have to click next page http://lifehacker.com/software/google/download-of-the-day-google-autopager-greasemonkey-252490.php http://lifehacker.com/software/google/download-of-the-day-go... Also, FF3 has Firebug. Game, set, and match.

sasvari 18y ago

Firefox + Foxmarks ^ no chance for Safari

bprater 18y ago

I've switched back-and-forth a bit, but have settled in with Firefox. Not having the extensions I like is a killer.

ajbatac 18y ago

If you are just browsing, reading stuff, Safari rules. However, if you are developing a website, use Firefox.

sc 18y ago
I don't know. These days, Safari's Web Inspector is quite on-par with Firebug, with some things I like even better.

mojuba 18y ago

For security reasons you need more than one browser anyway. One for webmail, banking and all kinds of private password-protected stuff, and the second one - for the rest. Which is which doesn't really matter, although personally I chose Safari for important stuff and Firefox for the rest. One of the reasons I do this, in case you are not aware, is the IFRAME flaw, that allows a malicious web site to load, say, your bank's page into a hidden IFRAME, check to see if you are logged in and then - you guessed it. (I just thought actually, could be the other way around, because vulnerabilities in Firefox are better known and more often exploited by not-so-trustworthy sites. So maybe it'd be smarter to use Safari for "the rest" and Firefox - for your banking, PayPal, eBay, webemail, etc.)

anewaccountname 18y ago
Why not just use different profiles and run multiple instances of Firefox?
- mojuba 18y ago
  If I can run them simultaneously, then why not. Is it possible with FF?

silencio 18y ago

I'm still sticking with Safari. Safari UX is just..nicer. To me, that is. On the other hand, Firefox is definitely powerful and I love some of the addons, so I'll use it for development purposes - a lot of Firebug etc., have become moot with Safari's new and hot developer tools, but I still need to do some Firefox-specific things. But I don't want to spend so much time customizing how it looks/behaves.

zzzmarcus 18y ago

The main reason I stick with FF is for Firebug and the Del.icio.us plugins.

jimm 18y ago
Those two and AdBlock---though I just discovered an ad blocker on pimpmysafari.com. (For the record: I use Firefox.)
- evgen 18y ago
  Check out safariadblock (safariadblock.sourceforge.net) for an adblocker that is basically a port of adblockplus.
ionfish 18y ago
I find that having the 'Add to del.icio.us' bookmarklet in my bookmarks bar and then just hitting Cmd+1 whenever I want to bookmark something works pretty well. I tend to hide the bookmarks bar because the way I use it, it just takes up unnecessary screen space, but the procedure above doesn't require it.

hokey 18y ago

FF3, here's why: 1) Add-ons. I can customize more than Safari and plugging into the cloud today is more important than ever. 2) Safari is snappy but the new release of FF puts it on par if not over the top. Safari is way better for pr0n surfing, however :P

DougBTX 18y ago

Still running Safari, no reason or need to switch.

feverishaaron 18y ago

Safari to surf, Firefox to develop because of Firebug. So far though, I am very unimpressed with the interface choices they made with Firefox.

boucher 18y ago
Webkit nightlies have an enhanced Web Inspector that's nearly as good as Firebug.
- ps 18y ago
  For me, it is far behind Firebug. I really miss keyboard shortcuts (at least for inspecting XHRs, please) and layout HTML/CSS inspection (not just highlighting elements while browsing tree).
  - ionfish 18y ago
    It's certainly not there yet, but the Web Inspector in recent nightlies is a lot closer to Firebug than the one in Safari 3.1. That, and the advances the WebKit team are making elsewhere, gives me a lot of confidence that it's only a matter of time before Safari has a built-in web development tool and JavaScript debugger that matches or improves on Firebug in every area.

crux 18y ago

vimperator means that as much as i love webkit, i'll never leave firefox's insane quasi-native interface.

makecheck 18y ago

Neither, really...OmniWeb is better. Technically it is now using the Safari engine, but the browser itself is superior to Safari. It has very nice per-site preferences, really smart privacy options, plug-in management, etc.

ynd 18y ago

FF3. Apple developers succeeded in make Safari FEEL more solid but it crashes too often. I also wish Safari was as configurable as FF.

tokyotribe28 18y ago

I use both. Safari's still got a better look and feel, I think, so that's my default.

wigglywonk 18y ago

Firefox is a -beast- on the mac. It drags and constantly seems to be using 5% of CPU, doesn't do fonts right, and hangs and lags a lot. So, i use Safari about 80% of the time. However, it's got a lot of great plugins, so I use it for any questionable stuff and for proxied traffic, etc.

Maro 18y ago

Safari seems buggy to me. For example, go to Google Docs, open a document and tell me what key combination jumps to the beginning/end of the line. (The answer seems to be none.) Same for Firefox. Opera is the only browser where this simple "feature" works. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

geuis 18y ago

Firefox. Definitely Firefox. The UI on Safari isn't really that good.

pierrefar 18y ago

If you like your keyboard shortcuts that (mostly) work across all FF installations across all platforms, go with FF. If you're a Mac-only person, stick with Safari if you already know it well. Also, FF has extensions which although there are good alternatives on Safari, I sincerely doubt there are as many good quality ones for Safari as for FF.

cstef 18y ago

I use Safari for general browsing because it is fast and familiar. I use Firefox for web development because the add-ons and tools such as firebug and web developer toolbar can not be beat.

syalam 18y ago

used to do safari. now im on firefox because of speed, and better extensions. lets see if safari 4 can turn the tables